Lemanuel Williams: and I was headed to court. ⁓ it was for me ⁓ having suspended ⁓ not suspended license, but it was ⁓ a expired registration tag. and ⁓ I go to court, man. I didn't know the difference. This is my first time. I didn't know the difference between civil law, I didn't know ⁓ and criminal law. So here I am in this cold courtroom. ⁓ I enter inside and ⁓ man I'm waiting on the docket for my next thing. This guy comes in. ⁓ he looked like he'd been in a brawl inside of the courtyard, grass all over him, dirt all over him. He got some pictures inside of his hand. He's going up to the judge's ⁓ desk. And ⁓ he begins to plead his case. He had a DUI. ⁓ and he w he had no lawyer with him. He's trying to plead his own case. Say the least, he ended up in cuffs and was taken off. But I was next on the docket. And so again, not knowing the difference between criminal law, civil law, I'm thinking it's a possibility I'm gonna go to jail. ⁓ and so I'm freaking out. I go up to the to the judge's desk and I'm got my hands all over the cops like ⁓ move your hand, like you can't do that. I don't know what I'm doing. So I'm sitting there, I got my registration updated, ⁓ Judge dismisses the case, just gives me a stern warning about it. My stress was gone. That was it. Point is that's what stress is. Stress is this outside thing that's coming, puts the pressure on you. ⁓ and then when it's done, it it's gone. That's what stress is. It's a outside thing, deadline, upcoming payment, whatever it is. You got the stress, the pressure of that coming, and then once it's done, it's gone. Anxiety, on the other hand. That's different. It is this persistent excessive worry that can occur even when there's a complete absence of an immediate threat or something that's before you. It stresses you beyond your stress. Another way of putting this is anxiety lives and feeds off of what if? Right? What if this happens? It plays all the scenarios inside of your mind of the things that could be ⁓ immediate threats, but they're not immediate threats. They're not actually there. Let me give you some examples of that. So again, you got rent due on Friday. That could be something that's outside of you coming up due, right? ⁓ you have stress on that, the pressure is there, maybe you don't have enough money for it. But let's say you do end up paying off that rent and you end up getting that done. Well, rent is paid. Anxiety says the rent's paid, but man, I still can't stop worrying whether or we'll be homeless one day. That's different. Let's say with health, ⁓ you're waiting on medical results to come in. ⁓ that's a pressure that that medical result is waiting for you. But then you get it, it says you're okay. And then anxiety says, all right, it's okay, but it but I'm not I'm not convinced that something ain't seriously still wrong with me. That's anxiety. Parenting. ⁓ your child may be sick one night, and you might be concerned for them. ⁓ and they may get well. Anxiety would say, even if your child's in perfect health, ⁓ your constant. constantly imagining something might happen to them. Let's say work. There's a presentation. There's a project, a deadline that's coming up. ⁓ the pressure's there, the stress is there, but then you get the presentation done, you get the project done. It went well, but you still anxiety says, man, I might lose my job still later on in the future. And relationships, the same thing. Stress. My spouse and I had a difficult conversation. That stress there, I wonder if things get better. Things do get better. And anxiety says, I can't stop wondering whether they're secretly unhappy or they're gonna leave me one day. You see the difference? Stress says there's something happening right now that requires my attention. Anxiety says there's something bad that might happen, and I can't stop living as if it's already happened. The research shows the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders states that nearly half of Americans suffer from anxiety at different levels. And we're feeling more anxious even now. About 19.1%, the 64 million American adults suffer from clinical anxiety disorders. Recent polling inside of the American Psychiatric Association highlights that nearly half of all Americans are more anxious now than they were last year. The few things that contribute to that the economy. Up to seventy one percent of adults report feeling anxious about their financial and the economic stress that they're under. ⁓ societal and political pressure that is there is causing anxiety. So ⁓ major elections that are coming up, the polarization in our political environment is causing people to stress. The global turmoil that we're facing. So you think about the international wars that are happening, that's causing people anxiety. ⁓ the advancement of technology and how fast it's moving, it's causing people more and more ⁓ techno ⁓ anxiety. Another interesting stat though that I saw from this is one half of all those diagnosed with depression. Are also diagnosed with anxiety disorder. Here's why I'm quoting all that research. We are some anxious people. And there is a lot of things that cause the anxiety in us, but one thing is certain: there is anxiety in us. So here's the question I have for you: What are you anxious about? What are you worried about? In our text that we just read, Paul says these words. Do not be anxious for anything. That's where we're tempted to kind of laugh at the Bible. Because that seems absolutely impossible. And it also doesn't even seem real. It's like Paul, come on, man. Keep it real. Don't be anxious about anything. Some degree we can actually laugh about the Bible. If that is the only thing that was said right there when he said this. But here's the catch. Verse 5, these words are what precede those words. This is what makes it make sense. Verse 5. The Lord is near. The Lord is near. The command, do not be anxious, doesn't begin with you trying hard, not trying to be anxious, because Paul doesn't want you beginning with trying to work hard not to be anxious. Then you'll probably just be anxious about trying not to be anxious. That's a vicious cycle. No, the remedy of your anxiety and your ability to not be crippled by that anxiety begins not with something you do, but acknowledging who is actually with you. Paul says, the Lord is near. Because not being anxious, it actually doesn't begin with you trying not to be anxious, it begins with you acknowledging the reality of his presence. The Lord is near. But here's the reality. Ask yourself how often do we live as if he's far away? How often do we live as if he don't even exist? How often do we even think about him or we forget about him? We fail to even think about him throughout our day. How often do we think about him inside of our crisis versus our comfort? So often we live as ⁓ practical deists than Christians. Here's what I mean by that. A practical deist, they believe that God exists, but they live as if he's distant. You ever heard about the God and the watchmaker? He makes the watch, but he doesn't mess with anything inside of the watch. That's what the deist, the practical deist is. So it's a God that created the world, but he isn't present, he isn't attentive, he's not concerned with your everyday matters. He's there, as in theory, he doesn't function ⁓ with you on the day-to-day basis, he's absent. He's not a God that's actually bothered with the little things inside of your life. But that's not the God of the scriptures. The Christian confession isn't God exists. The Christian confession is what Paul just said here: the Lord is near. He is present. He is attentive. He is involved. He cares. And he invites his children to walk with him through every ordinary moment in every ordinary day. But here's the reality. We live as if he only exists when we come inside these four walls. We live as if he only exists whenever we're in our little secret and quiet place, when we're when we when we got time alone with him. We live as if the rest of the week we don't really need him at all. We can handle everything ourselves. We say with the word, hey, he's near, but but we're not convinced that he's actually near. We replace the words with he's near, and we won't say this out loud. This is how we live. God's forgotten about me. I'm not in good hands. My future is not secure. God can't be trusted. He's less than what he's promised to be. Again, you don't say this with your mouth. You say it with how you live. I'm on my own. That is a lie from the flesh and hell. You are not alone. The Lord is near, friends. And in order for us to get that reality deep into our bones, we have to learn to believe and actually practice what Christians throughout the centuries practice. It's this Latin phrase called quorum deo. Korondeo means living before the face of God. Living every moment as if God is there because he is there. You know, the first home ⁓ Sarah and I brought is in a rough area. ⁓ we had a couple of break-ins that happened there. And I finally had it. ⁓ One night ⁓ a guy or a couple of guys broke into a car and they accidentally hit the horn. So it's ⁓ two thirty in the morning, I pop up, I'm not dumb enough to run out there, I didn't even have a gun or anything. ⁓ let's not talk about that. ⁓ but I I go to the window, peep open, see her, ⁓ see them out there and they scurry away, right? ⁓ and then I look over inside of a dark area over there and like three to five other guys scurry down with them. So they were ready for somebody to come in and intervene on their robbery. Well, I had enough, so I called the security company the next day, signed one of them dumb contracts, ⁓ because I just wanted to get this thing, I wanted to be secure. I don't want no robbers coming around inside of the house. So we got the sign, we got to put it in front of the house, had the cameras up there, everything was secure, because we didn't want the thieves to come anymore. They could see the camera, they could see the sign, hopefully that would deter them. You know, when we hear the words the Lord is near, we often imagine it like that. Like it's a divine security camera. He's always watching. He's waiting for you to mess up. He's keeping you, you, you recorded in every mistake. But that's not what Paul is getting across here. Paul isn't saying the Lord is near, so you better behave. He's saying the Lord is near, so don't be afraid. Lord's presence is not primarily surveillance, it's about a present companionship. It's about present help. It's about present comfort. Just the other day, ⁓ walking in Battle Park with my family on a family walk, and ⁓ Langston and them are going up this, my daughter and my son are going up this steep rock. And ⁓ Ella, I'm right behind Ella, which is my daughter, and she's going up and she sees some stairs there, but it's still too steep. So she turns around and she says, Daddy, keep you on my hand, help me up this rock. And so what I do, I reach out my hand. I grab her hand. Why? Because I was near. And the nearness changed everything. Now the rock didn't suddenly become less steep. She didn't suddenly become more stronger. She changed everything changed because she knew that I was near. I would she wasn't climbing alone. Brothers and sisters, that's what Coramdeo is, living before the face of God. It doesn't mean living under a cold gaze of a security camera of God. It means living every moment with the loving presence of the Father whose hand is always extended out to you as his children. So how do we do that? You probably ask. Well, is that practically? How do we live before the face of God every moment inside of our life? Here's how we're going to cultivate living in his presence. I'm gonna give you a couple of things. First, we have to set up the fur the the proper expectation about his presence. Here's what I mean. We should not expect nor seek only spectacular encounters with God. Some of y'all are thrill seekers inside of here. You want to feel good. You want to have that good emotional experience all the time. But you know what that does? It minimizes the normal way Christians have experienced God throughout the centuries. Believe it or not, the norm that that is not the norm of encountering God. It wasn't always loud and entertaining and high in emotion. It wasn't a wild, earth-shattering experience, an emotional, spiritual experience. No, those were the exceptions to the norm. Rather, the norm was what Elijah experienced in the desert. Look at it with me right here in 1 King 19, 11 through 12. And God said to Elijah, Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by. And a great storm and wind tore the crowds and broke into pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, this bursting fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. Here it is. And after the fire, all of these boisterous, loud things. The sound of a low whisper. Some even say translations a sound of a thin silence. We need to realize that God's presence is typically not in the mouth-shatter mountain-shattering wind, or in the convulsions of earthquakes, or in the consuming fire experiences, but rather God is to be found in a gentle, quiet whisper, in thin silence. Here's the point. It's not the earth-shattering experience that are the gift to us. His present is the present. Put a bow on it. That's the gift to us. Not all the things that happen because he's present. So so so we first have to set the proper expectation, not to look for extraordinary moments of life, but to find him in the ordinary moments of life. And here's one way you can do that: carve out some time in your day and begin to reflect and notice how God has been working throughout your day. You can use these two questions, and there's some more I'll have. Where have you met God today? Where'd you meet him today? Where'd you see him at work? And another question, where have I missed him today? You can reflect on this at the end of your day. It's a great it's a great exercise to do, to examine. Further, cultivate your attentiveness in perceiving God's presence, you can ask these two questions. What helps me pay attention to God? And then what hinders me from paying attention to God? And if you can answer those two questions, go even further. If I know what helps me pay attention to God, how often do I actually seek to engage in those activities or those practices? Or if I know and I recognize what hinders me from my awareness of God, what can I reduce to remove those hindrances? Those are just simple practical questions you can ask yourself that gives you a practical step to beginning practicing the presence of God. Paul is telling us that. The Lord is near, and that is intended to be comfort for us, but it won't be comfort to you if you don't cultivate the attentiveness that he is actually near you. I love how C.S. Lewis says it. He says this, we may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere, incognito, that is, in an unrecognizable position. And incognito, since he's unrecognizable, is not always hard to penetrate. It's not always hard to perceive. He says this, but the real labor is to attend or be attentive to his presence. In fact, to come awake, still more, to remain awake. The Lord is near, and as C.S. Lewis just said. His incognito or him being unrecognizable is not hard to penetrate or perceive, but the real labor is for us to attend to it, to be attentive to it. We have to practice being attentive to his presence so we can recognize he's there. Because here's the reality, guys. It's not always obvious that he's there. As we say, life be lifened. And when that begins happening. It's not obvious that he's there. So we have to practice recognizing his presence. And when we operate in that reality, Paul says in this in verse 6 do not be anxious about anything. But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. So he tells us what not to do. Don't be anxious about anything. But here's what he doesn't mean: it doesn't mean you will never worry about anything. But here's what it does mean: when you begin to worry, You know how to free yourself from worry. And therefore, when you begin worrying, you must free yourself from the worry. Notice this is not a therapeutic suggestion or advice, it's a command. Here's why that matters. To continue in worry when you've been given what you need to be freed from worry is actually a sinful act of unbelief. It's unbelief that he isn't near. That's a lie. It's unbelief that he doesn't care. That's a lie. So to continue to believe those things is actually not just to say it, but to live in a lie. No, he is near and he does care. And that's why he wants you to in prayer, Psalm 55, 22, it says, Cast your burdens on the Lord, and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved or to be shaken. Or 1 Peter 5, 6 through 7. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Doing what? Casting all your anxieties on him. Because he cares for you. Your continual worry is not a sign of humility. Your continual worry is a sign of pride. And pride does not pray. Pride says, hmm. He may not say it with his mouth, but it lives this way. God is not yet here. He must have forgotten about me. Pride says, I'm not good. I'm not I'm not g I'm not in any good hands. Pride says, God can't be trusted. Pride says, I have to do this on my own. I have to take this into my own hands. What does that look like concretely for us? It looks like you lying awake at two AM replaying every possible outcome, believing that if you just think about it long enough, somehow you'll control it tomorrow. That's pride saying, it all depends on me. You're afraid to make a decision because you believe one wrong choice will ruin your future. That's pride saying, God isn't big enough to guide me if I make a mistake. Your bank account is getting low, so you your first instinct is to panic instead of pray. That's pride saying, My security rests in my ability to provide, not in my father's care. Someone disappoints you, and instead of entrusting ⁓ the situation to God, you spend days trying to manipulate an outcome and control every conversation. That's pride saying, I I I gotta fix this. And if I don't, nobody else will. Brothers and sisters, that's why continual unrelenting worry is so deceptive. It feels like humility because you're weighed down by stuff. ⁓ man, it's just so heavy. But underneath that weight, if you get into the heart of the person that's carrying that weight, They say everything depends on me. That's not humility. Humility says, I'm not enough, but my father is. Humility prays. Humility reaches for the Father's hand as my daughter reached for my hand and asks for help. Humility believes what Paul says is true. The Lord is near. And because he's near, I don't have to carry what he's invited me to cast upon him. I remember even walking to Battle Park, picking back up and that and family walks. My son one time he had this training bike and on this training bike the the the pedals don't actually work. So like it's supposed to be training them to actually do the pedals, so it's like they're running. And we had done pretty long walk and we're on our way back. We're only like a quarter way back. And he looks at me and he's tired. He says, Dad, ⁓ can you carry my bike bike for me? Now I should have told him no, you bought the bike, you need to go all the way. But I took the bike. And guess what he did? He just scurried on off, didn't think about the bike, didn't think about the burden of holding it anymore. I took the burden of the bike, and he didn't have to worry about carrying the burden a step further. He could walk free from the burden and not even worry or think about the burden anymore. Give your burdens to God. And walk free of the burden of worry, friends. How do we do that? Verse 6. He says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication. This is how we do it with thanksgiving. Let your request be made known to God. We learn how not to be anxious about anything and how to cast everything upon him. How do we do it? Paul just said through prayer. But here's the role, we gotta learn how to persistently and consistently pray. We'll be covering that throughout the series. It's been one of the most heartbreaking things inside of pastoral ministry over the years to see people who know how to pray in a moment, but they've not develop a prayer life. So, how do we begin to develop a prayer life? Well, let's start real simple. Your prayers do not have to be perfect, number one. That's something very important to grasp. But also, ⁓ if you learn how to pray, ⁓ one of the things you're gonna have to start doing is actually starting to pray. That that's it. That's how we begin to learn how to pray. Richard Foster, some quotes here that I love. By praying, we learn how to pray, Richard Foster says Thomas Merton, ⁓ great spiritual master. He wrote: If you want a life of prayer, the way to get it is by praying. Mother Teresa instructed: if we really mean to pray and want to pray, we must be ready to do it now. It's that simple. Friends, prayer is more of a practice than it is a theory. So as we grow in this series and practicing the presence of God, I want us to grow in prayer before God. Here's one practical thing that we can do. Don John Chapman, he said this: pray as you can and don't try to pray as you can't. Say that again. Pray as you can and don't try to pray as you can't. What does that mean? Well, show up where you are. Maybe you can't pray for 30 minutes. Pray for five. Maybe ain't five. Do one minute. Maybe you have a hard time praying with faith and in belief. Well, tell it, tell the Lord your doubts and your disappointment. He won't be bothered by that. ⁓ maybe you have a problem praying aloud. Begin journaling your prayers. The point is this: prayer is about presence over any sort of petitions or asks that we have. Here's what I mean. Prayer is not essentially about you being free from your anxiety and God meeting your necessities. It's not about outcomes. It's about choosing to be with and spending time with God the Father. Not just spending time with him to get results from him. You know what that's like when somebody spends time with you because they're trying get something from you. You felt that. You don't even like them being in your presence most of the time. They just want to spend time because they want to get something from you. It's different from somebody that spends time with you because they love and they actually adore you. There's a qualitative difference. And this is essentially why most of us don't pray. Because if we don't get what we want out of prayer, then we ask, huh, what's the point of prayer? Well, you missed the point of prayer. It's not primarily about you getting what you want, it's about your soul being satisfied with what it was made to truly want and need. That is his presence. If prayer becomes essentially about outcomes or God meeting your needs, you will never come to where Jesus actually wanted to give us, and you'll never get what Jesus actually wanted to give us inside of prayer. And that is to be deeply and truly known in the reality of his presence. When Jesus would spend full nights inside of prayer, he wasn't out there praying because he was trying to get what he wants. No. He was trying to spend time with the Father. You got good friends that you could spend all night with. You got to kick them out of your house, right? That's the type of thing we're talking about. My prayer is that we'll become a people of deep prayer. How do we do it? It doesn't happen other than night. Like I said, start where you are. Take a couple minutes each day. Talk to him about the little details inside of your life. Talk to him about ways that you believe that he's disappointed you and let you down. Talk to him about the blessings you you know you don't deserve. Talk to him about the anxiety you're carrying. Talk to him. You don't have to sound high and mighty. You don't need to have every anything memorized. You just need to talk to him, meet with him, make the time to do that. And this is what Paul says the result is in our last verse, verse 7. In the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. Will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Don't miss this. The word and is a conjunction. It joins together the thought that was before. So that means you can't have this apart. You gotta know the Lord's here and practice his presence. You have to pray, and, and then and only then and will you be able to have this peace that he's talking about. They go hand in hand. If you don't do both of those things, you will always have anxiety. You must practice these things to not have anxiety about everything. Also, notice though, Paul doesn't say that you'll have the peace of God because all your prayers are going to be answered. There's no such guarantee. The peace is not the result of how effective or powerful your prayers are. The peace does not come from answered prayers, but it comes from a prayerful presence. You y you know what this is like. Whenever you step inside of a room, I used to have my colleagues, ⁓ the office I had and ⁓ decorated really nice and ⁓ they would always smell coffee and ⁓ just aromas that came from there like, man, man, I just want to come sit inside of that office and be in your presence and also just like enjoy the presence of ⁓ of all the things you have, the aromas and all that type of thing. You know what that's like. That's where that peace kinda comes from with God. That's just an example, but there is a great There's a greater peace and presence the Lord is giving you, and that He wants to offer you through prayer. His presence, though, is the gift that gives you peace. And Paul describes that that peace, it surpasses understanding. Why? Because it just doesn't make sense. It's not a nonchalant kind of like a kuna matata, a blind optimism where we don't care about anything, so we don't have to worry about anything. No, I love how John Calvin wrote about it. He said, Nothing is more foreign to the human mind than to hope in the depth of despair. And in the depth of poverty to see riches, and in the depth of weakness not to give way. To make that more clear, here's why this peace doesn't seem to make sense. Because we could be practicing the presence of God. We could be praying, and that does not mean that we will not have a bunch of problems that plague our lives. On the contrary. In the midst of all of those problems that will plague our lives, there is this powerful and prevailing peace. That's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:8 through 9, we're afflicted in every way, but we're not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. And what does it say? That in the midst of the storms of life, we have the peace that calms and quiets our souls. Not because there's no troubles and no problems in our life, but because as we journey through this life, the one who is in the boat with us is. Able to say to the things that are causing the raging storm of anxiety in us, peace be still. And we didn't do anything miraculous for that to happen. We just realized who's in the boat with us, and we said, Lord, help us. Just because we practice the presence and we pray. It doesn't mean we won't have a bunch of problems that plague our lives. On the contrary, what this is saying that in the midst of all of those problems that will plague our lives, there will be a powerful and a prevailing peace that actually demonstrates the power of that peace. Listen to what Paul says. It's not just a peace that surpasses understanding. He says also, as I rush to close, it will guard your hearts and your minds. This piece is not some fragile and frail piece. It's not a feeble, failing piece. This piece is powerful to protect. There's two images that he gives that I want to paint to you really quick. One of the images is of guarding. And so in the Roman Empire during the prox ⁓ the prox romana, this is the most peaceful time in earth during that time. The empire is ruling, and what Rome would do is they would send a garrison of soldiers to a territory that they took over, and that garrison of soldiers, it was a strategic plan to keep the peace in the city that they took over. And so Paul is saying to us. That far better than the Roman Empire, God has had a strategic plan to set up a force of peace within you to continue to guard the peace within you. There's a plan in place to keep the peace in place. It's practicing the presence of God and prayer. That's the plan. The strategic plan of practicing the presence of God and prayer is what fortifies your heart with the peace. But that image of guarding it goes further. Rome would also place soldiers on guard at the city gates to protect against outward invasion that would come and disturb the peace. So anything that would attack the city to try to stop that peace. But then they would always, the soldiers also would stamp out any sort of inward disturbance. So revolt or insurrection to keep the peace. So the soldiers would strategically set to impose peace on the inside and guard against any attack of peace that was coming from the outside. God In his peace, it actually stamps out anything that would disrupt our peace on the inside, and it guards against anything that will attack our peace from the outside. This peace is not a weak peace. It's a bastion. It's a bulwark. It's like a battalion of soldiers that guard and protect the peace of our souls. And Paul says, This peace also guards our hearts and our minds. So it's not just a fortress that guards us. It's not just like soldiers that guard us, but it's like armor that he puts on us to guard us. Elsewhere, Paul talks about the full armor of God in Ephesians chapter six. And the peace is like that breastplate of armor, or what Paul called the breastplate of righteousness. But it's also like that helmet of armor. What he called the helmet of salvation. That peace is that armor that's going to protect your heart and it's going to protect your mind. Brothers and sisters, what this is telling us. You often hear, I'm gonna pray, I gotta protect my peace. And Paul is saying it's the other way around. It's the peace that's protecting you. It's guarding you. So practicing his presence in prayer doesn't erase our problems, but it gives us peace that surpasses understanding in the midst of our problems. It's like a strategically planned fortified city that guards the peace, the peace that guards our hearts and minds. It's like a bastion and a bulwark and a battalion of soldiers. This peace that guards our hearts and our minds. It's like soldiers strategically set to impose peace. On the inside and guard against anything that will attack our peace from the outside. And this peace guards our hearts and our minds. It's like armor that's impenetrable, and this peace guards our hearts and our minds. But I don't want you to miss this. You can only access that peace through the Prince of Peace. That's why Paul ends with these three words. They're not just throwaway words. He says in verse 7, And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. Well, guard your hearts and your minds. Here's the three words you can't throw away. In Christ Jesus. In Christ Jesus. You cannot be outside of Christ and have this peace. You must be in Christ. You and I were born in Adam. We were born in sin. We were born separated from God. We were born under his righteous judgment. But God didn't leave us there. The Son of God stepped into our world and he lived the life we failed to live. He bore the judgment we deserve to bear. He died in the place of sinners, and three days later he rose again and had victory over sin, Satan, and death. And now everyone who repents of their sins and Puts their faith and trust in Jesus Christ is united in him. They are taken out of Adam and they are placed into Christ. We are born again. And when we are in him and we remain in him and abide in him, you have access to a peace that surpasses all understanding in him. But is this not the peace that we saw him live in? He knew his father was always near when he was on earth. He experienced the same anxieties and troubles of this world. So he continually withdrew to pray. He lived that peace which surpasses understanding. In the wilderness, when he was hungry and tired, he had a peace that guarded his heart and mind. When he was falsely accused, he had a peace that guarded his heart and mind. In the Garden of Gethsemane, when he prayed, Father, if it be possible, take this cup away from me. He had a peace that guarded his heart and mind. As he carried the cross to Golgotha, he had a peace that guarded his heart and mind. As he hung upon the cross while he gambled on his garments and they mocked his mission, he had a peace that guarded his heart and Heart and his mind when he cried out, It is finished, and his enemies actually thought he was finished. He had a peace that guarded his heart and mind, and he could cry out at the end of that, Father. Into your hands I commit my spirit because Jesus never let go of the Father's hand as my daughter never let go of my hand. Even when he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, according to the Father's plan, he could say with all confidence as we sing, He will hold me fast, He will hold me fast because my Father loves me so, He will hold me fast with the peace that guarded his heart and mind, even through death. And three days later, he's gonna walk through the grave and he. Enters a room where his disciples are hiding behind locked doors, fearful, anxious, overwhelmed with the troubles of the world. And his first words to the disciples are what? Peace be with you. Why? Because he had purchased that peace with his own blood. The peace that guarded him through the suffering is now the peace that he gives to his people in the midst of their suffering. And today, all who repent and believe in him, this peace he gives to you. He gives to you. This is what he said to his disciples. This is the peace in John 14, 27. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives to you, do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Why? Because as Paul has said in our text today, the Lord is near. So do not be anxious about anything. But in everything, prayer and supplication, make your request known before God in the peace that surpasses all understanding. Will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. Do you believe it? Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father. We are an anxious people. We are a fickle people inside of our belief. We often doubt you. Unbelief plagues our heart often at times. But Father, as we hear in your word, you're calling us to rest in your presence. You're calling us to a life where we don't have to live in worry, but we can cast our anxiety and our worries upon you and trust in your care for us. So I'm just praying, Lord, as us as your people, as we hear your word, plant that deep into our hearts, Lord. Help us, Lord, to be a people that will not just hear about your presence, desire your presence, but Lord, actually just live in your presence. Lord, you're calling us into a life where we can do that in prayer. I pray. Father, would you make us a people that live our life in prayer as your son lived a life in prayer? Not one that is done in the moment, but one that just wants to soak in your presence and be with you and spend time with you. Not one that's just looking to get things from you. But Lord, your presence, Lord, be able to see that it's all that we need. And in your presence is the fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Father, would you teach us, Lord, to desire just to be with you in this series? Above anything else. Lord, and I pray the peace that you talked about, it would guard us as many problems will arise inside of our life, even as we leave out for this week. But let us sense in your presence a peace that surpasses understanding and that will guard our hearts. In our minds in Christ Jesus. Lord, do that for your glory and our good. All this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. We turn now to a couple of ways in which we want to respond to the word of God. He has spoken to us. And anytime he speaks inside of the scriptures, it always demands a response. So that's what we do here in a moment. We're going to stand and we're going to begin singing in a second. That would be one way we respond. Another way we'll have communion and then we'll also be giving. But I just want to extend to you, there are some people in here that you have not entered into that presence of Christ. Because you're not in Christ. You're outside of him. And if that's you, and you say, Man, brother, I want some of that peace that surpasses.